The apparent inevitability of Rangers' impending descent into administration, after months of speculation around their finances, has done nothing to douse the fierce impact of reality.

On Monday afternoon came confirmation that papers had been lodged at Edinburgh's court of session to state an intention to place the club in the hands of an administrator. The fallout appeared cataclysmic, spreading far beyond Rangers' Govan base.

Rangers are not simply a football club with a world-record title-winning history, they are a British sporting institution. The tumble from grace of such a body, then, has caused ructions.

Finger-pointing and blame games are now rife, but what cannot be denied above all else is that mismanagement at Ibrox, initially in pursuit of an unattainable European dream, has cost Rangers to the extent that the club that survives this process – if indeed it does – will be a pale shadow of its former self.

There are two strands to this fascinating tale. The first is the pressing questions around Craig Whyte's stewardship of Rangers since he bought Sir David Murray's majority shareholding for £1 last May. From the outset, it seemed curious that any businessman would buy a business facing a potential and widely reported £49m contingent liability if it was defeated in a tax tribunal.

But it was with Murray himself that Rangers' troubles began. A pertinent description of wild spending days at Ibrox, most notably when Dick Advocaat was manager, was that he was guilty of "financial vandalism" in chasing European glory. The former chairman's vision for Rangers as outgrowing Scottish football had no basis in reality.

This was a Rangers who saw fit to spend £12m on Tore Andre Flo and a host of highly paid foreign players as net debt peaked at £80m. The return on that did not mirror outlay, with Rangers struggling to make much more than a minimal impact on the Champions League. Nonetheless, it must be said that supporters who point towards Murray's role in the current predicament were not nearly so concerned when domestic trophies were routinely racked up.

Murray's business model of high debt and high turnover became problematic at the time of the banking crisis. As the Lloyds Banking Group took a firm grasp of Murray's affairs, Rangers were unsurprisingly caught up. For two years until Whyte took control, Rangers were run with the bank as firm overlords.

Rangers' use of employee benefit trust schemes to pay players during the period from 2001 is the matter which led to such close interest from Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs. Whyte has now claimed that the cost of defeat in the case – and the result is not yet known – could actually rise to in excess of £75m.

This troubled legacy, nonetheless, should arguably be treated in isolation from Whyte's own strategy. It has been confirmed that he mortgaged future season ticket money at the club to the London-based firm Ticketus to the value of £24m, raising questions about his ability or willingness to fund Rangers in even the short term. Audited accounts for the last financial year have failed to appear despite promises to the contrary.

The chairman himself has admitted to a £10m black hole between Rangers' routine income and expenditure, a matter not helped this season by elimination from the Champions League and Europa League at the qualifying phase. It was Whyte, though, who was booed and heckled by fans on the front steps of Ibrox on Monday evening.

Rangers board members in the time immediately preceding Whyte's takeover were highly sceptical about the motives behind his purchase, with such sentiment edging into the public domain on an increasingly regular basis.

Whyte has been cagey about his previous business life and is still being investigated by the Scottish FA after reports surfaced that he served a seven-year ban from being a company director. His public reasoning for taking on Rangers, namely on the grounds of childhood affiliation and because nobody else was willing to do it, has never sounded particularly convincing.

"I think the very fact administration is being considered at this point, before the determination of the tax case is indicative of something and I'll let people make their own judgment as to what I'm referring to," said Alastair Johnston, who preceded Whyte as chairman. "At the end of the day he's doing whatever he thinks is in the best interest of Craig Whyte and we'll take it from there."

There are, of course, potentially wider ramifications. It was nothing more than coincidence that Celtic's chief executive, Peter Lawwell, used the publication of his club's interim financial results on Monday to stress Rangers are not essential to the wellbeing of their Old Firm rivals. Sympathy, it is safe to say, has not been flooding towards Rangers in this hour of need from those elsewhere in the Scottish game who were irked by years of lavishness and perceived arrogance.

"The way we would look at is we don't need Rangers," said Lawwell. "We have a strategy that we have embarked on, that's independent of Rangers or any other club in Scotland." Still, the Scottish Premier League's broadcasting deal with Sky Sports hinges on Rangers and Celtic remaining in the league and playing each other four times.

If this Ibrox scenario becomes even more grim, there is the potential of further penalties on account of a company voluntary agreement being rejected by creditors (although that is unlikely). Given the monetary troubles attached to the Scottish game, a genuine debate would arise in boardrooms between financial fair play and Rangers' clear commercial value to their opponents.

Such discussions remain a long way off. For now, followers of Rangers have quite enough with which to concern themselves. None of it is particularly pleasant.